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| John Butcher, DL, Lol Coxhill, Ute Wasserman, Chris Burn, John Russell, and Alex Ward at Fete Quaqua 2010, The Vortex, London |
The first couple of times I met John Russell were a little alarming.
One of these was, I believe, the first time we ever played together – September
23rd 2006 at Colourscape which was set
up on Clapham Common. John played beautifully but I found him
rather stern. I think he was slightly injured in some way and hence couldn't
help the crew moving equipment, but barked at others to do so. Another time, I
presume earlier than this – I think perhaps the first time I ever spoke to him
– I was in the queue at the late and lamented Red Rose in Finsbury Park (site
of so many of the gigs that John tirelessly promoted, until the Vortex became a
welcoming new home for Mopomoso after the Red Rose's closure) and he – not
knowing me from Adam – rolled up his trouser leg and showed off a startlingly
vivid wound on his lower leg. Part of what was going on here – including the
fact that both incidents involve injury – presumably had to do with John's
struggles with alcohol, although for most of the time I knew him he was very
much the victor. I remember untouched bottles of wine in his house that were
there purely for the pleasure of the constant stream of visiting musicians.
John understood hospitality better than anyone; apparently the Latin
"hospital" meant a guest-chamber, which is a darn fine description of
his flat in Walthamstow.
Another factor in my slight intimidation had nothing to do with John and everything to do with me and the fact that I was star-struck. He was – and of course remains – one of my musical heroes, a contributor to a number of albums that very much shaped my aspirations for the kind of musician I wanted to become. Two in particular stand out – The Scenic Route with John Butcher and Phil Durrant, and London Air Lift with Evan Parker, John Edwards, and Mark Sanders. (Much as it was a treat to hear John play in trio many times with Evan and John in recent years, I always regretted that, as far as I remember, I never heard the quartet with Mark live, which achieved on that album a near-perfect balance between the chunky muscularity of the best free jazz and a dogged refusal to order the music around.) I've been lucky enough to play with all the musicians on these records, some of them quite regularly, but I've never entirely shed the feeling of fanboy awkwardness with any of them. (With luck that at least helps keep me on my toes musically – a gig with any of these guys is one you don't want to fuck up on!)
But I think what really lay behind all this was John's concern for – and genuine interest in – others. If he couldn't help people run the gig smoothly, he'd damn well make sure that the other musicians didn't think they were above mucking in with the less glamorous side of things. (If free improvisation has a glamorous side, that is.) Life and music were equally serious businesses to him. Though I'm not quite sure I could entirely explain why, I think that an index of his profound seriousness – his sense that life wasn't round the corner, but was what was happening, right now – was his delight in sheer silliness. We shared a mutual fondness for Robert Fripp's combination of pomposity and drily self-aware humour, and I'd regularly get emails with links to various bits of Fripp-related nonsense that popped up on the internet. (The last time we played together, at my 40th birthday concert at Café Oto, he claimed to have snuck in a snippet of "21st Century Schizoid Man" as a birthday present, though I admit to missing it at the time…) The recent string of "lockdown lunch" videos were a particularly rich seam, of course. "Lockdown has got to 'em," he said of this particular video.
So, I have many happy memories of John at various gigs; having cups of tea at his place; marvelling at his skill with the Guardian crossword while in the car on tour with John Butcher. (It's a matter of regret to me that we never made a CD with that trio, but recordings do exist.) But my story here isn't "special" because so many people have extremely similar memories, all completely different in detail but identical in warmth and vividness. As a musician and as a human being (they aren't mutually exclusive) John unfailingly exhibited a real dedication and openness. He was one of the hardest-listening musicians I know and really had what musicians call (in that slightly enigmatic way perhaps a little irritating to non-musicians) "a sound". This wasn't just a matter of recognizability (instantly recognizable as his playing is), nor of the sonic qualities – brittle, spidery, glassy, springy – of the noises he made (perhaps most beautifully captured on the 2009 solo recording hyste) but was really something to do with his way of relating to the instrument, a matter not so much of "singing" – I'm not sure that John ever made his guitar "sing" – but of "sounding", of knowing when to coax, when to wrestle, and when to simply insist; John always made his guitar sound.
As attendees of Mopomoso concerts will know, John could be something of a raconteur. But his capacity for precise verbal expression is perhaps underestimated. One phrase from this article has long stayed with me as genuinely illuminating about the way he thought about music, as well as inspirational for the kind of music that free improvisation can be:
One of my aims is to have the ability to use all the
sound elements that the instrument can produce and, in improvising, to
constantly pick and choose their meaning (i.e. their musical function) within
the context of a developing music.
Looking over old emails from John, I discovered in a message from 20th May 2011 a little something that – "much to my surprise" he said – came out as a kind of poem. I present it here as a specimen of the combination of precision, eloquence, and enigma that was John Russell. Thanks for everything, John.
Engagement seems to be the key.
Engagement in the here and now.
But everything now left before it arrived.
A trick of the wiring.
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